Conventional technologies for server resource management for message-based protocols like Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) sequentially queue requests coming from clients for a limited time when no server side connections are available for those requests. Unfortunately, such sequential queuing is unfair in terms of its application to client requests as and when they arrive, and provides a crude back-off resulting in dropped packets. Further, conventional technologies do not provide any prioritization at the point when a decision to form the queue is made leading to delay of critical network traffic. Furthermore, conventional technologies impose an unfair delay using a traditional “cliff” threshold and do not take into account the fact that newer connections coming in could take priority over the delayed connections.